2

When I was a child, I had a dream. My holy dragon curled through the night sky, her tail sparking little suns into existence. Her breaths swept across a panoramic darkness and left behind clouds of nebula. She directed her gaze at me and blew a rainbow over me, turning my skin lime green, yellow, blue, purple, magenta, red. Each wave of color felt like a precious jewel. The colors twirled together, six bracelets of pure light that I slipped on my arm, where they glistened like scales.

I told my grandmother about the dream. Later that day, while collecting some of her hand-scribbled lab-notes, she said quite nonchalantly, “Azetmir Dragon Ashewe, you will use your dragon-sight as a traveler.” It did not make any sense to me at the time, but since she used my full name, I knew it was a serious pronouncement. Maybe that’s why I still remember the dream, or maybe my crone got it right and it was a prescient dream, a message from my name-sake that she only elucidated for me. What I can’t figure out is why Ray should remind me of that dream.

It has come to pass as my grandmother pronounced all these years ago: I have become a traveler, embodying the O’bonne maxim, Some knowledge can only be gained through reflection following experience. My home planet O’bonne is famous for the pursuit of knowledge in all its forms, and measures wealth by libraries and data banks. As a community of scholars, we are sought out by just about everybody in our known circle of planets, and we often provide the requested analytical work. Yet this wealth of accumulated information is only our superficial glory, for our true strength lies in our continuous meditation on that knowledge. We push forward by asking questions that we cannot answer, and by pursuing these questions wherever they may lead. Travelers like me go the farthest. We travel into the unknown of other worlds and other people to find fresh sights and new insights, to mesh the known with the unknown.

I apprenticed early, accompanying my mentors in my adolescence to Danyx, a beautiful lush tropical world we’ve studied for centuries, then to Earth, where I eventually completed fieldwork on my own. Earth has a tradition of sending scientists out to study unknown people, a tradition that can be likened to what I do. O’bonne travelers are really not unlike interstellar anthropologists, if one just sets aside the fact that anthropos refers to humans and we of course study many different sentient species. My third destination and first independent assignment, Alnos, is a planet colonized by migrants who became a people during an interstellar odyssey of almost two millenia.

The O’bonne Institute of Cultural Studies has sponsored Alnese fieldwork since shortly after colonization. Our interest has increased recently because of the disruptions brought about by a significant climate change that is resulting in big geographic changes and making the planet more attractive to newcomers. When the Institute offered to sponsor a two-year study of Alnese conflict resolution and to negotiate suitable agreements with a host on Alnos, I accepted happily. Four Alnese months after arrival, I struck up a deal to shadow an Alnese judge and his staff for a year, possibly longer if I could stand to stay on, and I made it through my first Alnese winter observing his activities.

In this my second summer on Alnos, I had gratefully accepted an invitation to a vacation compound built by the judge and his Pallas clan on the shores of one of their newly expanded tropical lakes, a balmy region by local standards. Even after a few weeks of Alnese tropical sun, my bones still needed defrosting! Unexpectedly, Doctor Tzalque Peg came looking for me there one night, when I was in Eden Tower meditating on the resplendent summer night sky. Eden Tower is the local nickname for a one-room office that rises above the Pallas summer villa’s roof and commands a stunning view of the lake, mountains, and sky. Like the whole vacation compound, it is named after Pallas Thor Eden, the Alnese judge who agreed to let me shadow him. He had conceived of the idea of replicating an Earthly lakeside villa on Alnos’ expanding lakeshores after an extended visit on Earth about a decade ago.

The tower office can only be reached by climbing up a narrow medieval spiral from the compound’s fourth floor. Once up the spire, I always ready myself against the weight of the imported O’bonne oak door, anchored in the wall with brass and iron, but then it slides open with an unexpected hush that echoes down the stairwell. Tzalque Peg’s steps echoed ahead of her long before she stuck her dark head into my observation chamber and coughed quite unnecessarily to announce herself. She gave me the time to emerge from my contemplations, and only started speaking after I breathed in deeply and turned to face her.

“I’ve come to ask you a favor.”

I nodded and immediately came to full attention. If I had learned one thing during my Alnese stay, it was the importance of the little Alnese phrase, “Could you do me a favor?”

“You have heard of my new patient?” the doctor queried next.

I nodded again.

“He needs,” she hesitated, “guidance.”

I breathed out slowly a second time, and then repeated, “Guidance.”

The doctor fussed with the pillows until she had reached a satisfactory arrangement and could seat herself with her back against the wall, then lifted her eyes and took in the stars herself. I followed her gaze, tracing the outline of my sky namesake again.

Finally comfortable, Peg continued, “I’m sorry about the rotten timing, and Lady Ciani also wanted you to know that she regrets the imposition.”

I dismissed her concern with a little wave, “Oh, so the request comes from her? It is hardly the case that her ladyship plans other people’s suicides, is it? What makes me fit the bill?”

Peg shrugged, “Your experience. You’re an outsider and you know the clan.”

“Well, I am an outsider.”

“And isn’t it true you’ve been to Earth?”

“That is the case.”

We fell silent as I considered the request. It occurred to me that I had never met, let alone gotten to know Pallas Leila, and that therefore I did not know at least one of the principals in this unfolding story. At the same time, I realized that Lady Ciani was well aware of my limitations, yet she obviously did not consider them an impediment. “I wonder what Alnos’ dragon-eyes have seen,” I murmured to myself. I could sense increased alertness in my companion and finally turned back to her, “Are we to meet soon?”

The doctor smiled, “You know how to make me happy, Ashewe Dragon!”

I returned the smile, “That’s hardly the point, doctor, don’t you think?”

“On the contrary!” An indignant look clashed with the sparkle in her eyes, “I care very much about what makes me happy, and so should the rest of Alnos!”

“Mm-hmm,” I acknowledged a bit doubtfully.

We both turned back to contemplate Alnos from the vantage point of Eden Tower. The sky was changing colors almost imperceptibly, entering that period right before dawn when shapes begin to take form. “Tell me about this Earthling,” I prompted the doctor.

“What can I tell you? Raymond’s human, a little younger than you, addicted to some strange Earthly cocktail that appears seriously damaging, and apparently tired of living with himself.”

“You’re guessing the last part.”

“Oh, if Pallas Leila had left him behind, he would have died. And there isn’t too much of him left, come to think of it. Not of the original him.”

I pressed on, “All right. What do you know about his relationship with Pallas Leila?”

“Pallas Leila met him seven or eight years ago after her separation from Pallas Thor Eden, when she returned to Earth. She met Raymond in a city, Berlin, though he’s from somewhere else. Don’t ask me what he did in that city. I only know that somehow, they got together. Then, when she decided to cast about for a good environment for her daughter Goal, they moved to a nearby land, Switzerland. Apparently, Berlin is not a good place to raise children.”

“You said he’s from somewhere else,” I began.

Peg continued quite obligingly with, “Well I’ve heard humans are quite cliquish, and apparently it matters very much whether you are from one place or another. Though really, come to think of it, you could say the same about us, what with our lineages and all … ”

“Where,” I emphasized gently.

She lifted both shoulders in a helpless gesture.

I tried another tack, “What does he look like?”

“You mean you can tell where they’re from by how they look?” The incredulous expression on her face softened my irritation with what I took as willful ignorance, as the good doctor knew perfectly well that many worlds do not present as diverse a mix of people as Alnos with its tradition of inter-stellar travels and inter-species mixing. Still, I evened out my voice, “Not with absolute certainty. But for a long period of time, humans lived in relatively stable, relatively separate, and relatively sedentary populations, so there is a correlation.”

“He could be my grandson. He has the same eyes, the same cheekbones, his hair is very black, straight. He is more angular, and taller, and he has darker skin.” The look of expectation on her face after she finished was both funny and immensely irritating, but I controlled myself.

I sighed and shook my head, “He belongs to the one group that could easily come from any Earth-continent!”

“Oh.”

“Well, except Europe, so he wasn’t from Berlin.”

After a brief pause Peg concluded with a wink, “I guess you’ll just have to ask him.”

“Switzerland.” I repeated quietly.

“You know it?”

“Not really. My mentors thought I should go to areas where I would blend in, so I ended up criss-crossing the Sahel. Earth is … Well, you’ve been to Ko, haven’t you? It’s a bit like Ko, where you also can tell most people’s communities of origin, and I would never pass as a European on Earth! What language does he speak? I mean, most comfortably.”

“He has been using something called English.”

“He and Leila use it?”

“And a few other languages. The child uses . . . Français?”

“That’s probably what they were using in Switzerland. The English, that’s the closest humans have come to a planetary language, and you’d expect two strangers to use it.”

Another quiet “Oh” followed.

“Seven or eight years,” I murmured more to myself than for anyone else’s benefit, “That’s longer than the alliance with Eden, if I remember my Pallas trivia correctly.” Peg lifted both eyebrows as encouragement to continue. The first arc of the sun cracked through the horizon, and a beam of light crept into one corner of the room as my favorite hour was about to start. I reflected Peg’s encouragement back to her, saying suggestively, “And she’s had a child with this Raymond. Sounds like a serious relationship. But wasn’t Pallas Leila serious about Eden, at the time?”

Peg did not disappoint me, “I do remember when the Pallas-Thor contract was negotiated. Everyone thought it would be a good match despite her youth. I mean, she was sixteen when she made up her mind to pursue him, and her elders really should have known better, but Pallas and Thor, old and new, the mingling of blood and all that, it was irresistible! Of course it didn’t last. The same passion that started it spoiled it, and quickly, too.”

That brief account gave me the chance to ask one of the many questions I had accumulated in my most recent year on Alnos shadowing Pallas Eden. I confess that I was delighted by this unanticipated opportunity. “What I don’t understand is why Leila and Eden didn’t just do what all do here, go off and each live their own life. I mean, without a public separation.”

“Why indeed?” came the disappointing reply, “Most of the House of Pallas would love to know. And Thor House, too, of course.”

“And why return to Earth, of all places?”

She looked at me as if that was the silliest question she had ever heard, “Well that’s where they’re from!”

I shot back an incredulous look, “Who is from Earth?”

“Thor. Eden’s clan!”

I started to clarify what I had meant, “No, not Eden,” when I interrupted myself and pursued this fascinating little tidbit of information, “They’re human?”

That made Peg back-pedal, “Well no, not human, just, the clan-mother was human, a refugee. A group, oh, about a dozen people, had lost all their relatives, so the clan was founded in memory of their lost people.”

“And allowed to stay together?”

“That was what was negotiated at the time. Everybody agreed that the circumstances were unusual, you see, and when Nambo House volunteered for the integration, a group split off and joined with the refugees and started the House of Thor. Not too far from here, now that I think of it.”

“And they lived happily ever after.”

“I thought they taught you not to make fun of your subjects!”

Peg’s mock-indignant tone softened the reprimand, but I still felt compelled to defend myself, “Ah, but it is Arthmis that I’m studying, not Thor House!”

She shook her index finger at me, “An insult to one is an insult to all!” At which point I raised both hands and bowed my head, conceding defeat.

The light in the sky had strengthened. The forest below us was coming alive with sounds and the new day looked as promising as dawn on the shores of my home world, filling me with confidence and energy. I couldn’t tell if it had the same effect on Peg, but her face had settled into a relaxed calm, and she sighed slowly to herself before continuing, “Now Leila, I don’t know why she would choose to return to Earth. Maybe she wanted to recapture something by returning to a place where she lived her first great passion. After all, she spent nearly a year on Earth with Eden and Goal. They must have been happy there, don’t you think?”

“That seems likely.”

Shortly after our last exchange about Pallas Thor Eden and his wife Leila, we went down to the villa’s dining room for some breakfast, after which I needed to sort through my belongings for my premature return to Alnos’ capital city. I didn’t particularly relish giving up the rest of my summer stay in the relative warmth of Eden Hamlet, but when the ruler of your host planet asks you for a favor, you better jump to it, and with a smile.